Why make it hard to pay taxes?

So, professionals like doctors, actors and columnists must now start paying 10-percent value-added tax on top of income taxes. Fine. But must the taxman make it so difficult for them to do so?

The guidelines have it that professionals must file monthly reports of the sale of their services. Plus, quarterly reports of their VAT remittances. That means they’ll have to hire accountants to count their incomes and handle the paperwork. Unless, of course, they want to spend one or two incomeless days a month doing these themselves, and lining up for hours at the BIR. And, oh, those accountants will have to pay their own VAT on proofessionals, too.

No wonder Sen. Ralph Recto has taken to calling the finance secretary James Bond. All Jose Isidro Camacho knows is to issue bonds as the way to raise government funds. A former banker, he doesn’t know how to collect. That’s why tax and duty collections last year were so low, and the budget deficit swelled from a planned P130 billion to P215 billion.

Now Camacho is angling to raise P8.6 billion more this year by not exempting professionals anymore from VAT. Yet he will do so by making it tedious for them to pay - and they’re already paying through the nose. At the same time, however, he will continue to exempt banks from paying VAT, and thus forfeit a bigger P12.8 billion in taxes from his fellow-Shylocks. Yet those banks already have the full-time accountants to work on the papers.

Not only professionals but car owners too are complaining about how Camacho is making it tough for them to register old or new vehicles. Last Nov. 2, Camacho caused President Gloria Arroyo to issue Executive Order 142 requiring car owners to present certificates of payments of taxes and duties, or else risk confiscation. These vehicles include American, Uuropean and Korean makes sold by reputable dealers, and used vans and trucks imported from Japan through the Subic Free Port from 2000 onwards.

Owners of Hyundai vans were shocked when Land Transportation Office branches nationwide stuck them with the new requirement. They only wanted to renew the yearly registrations of their relatively cheap but dependable Starex units. They had bought these brand-new from dealer showrooms or second-hand from classified ads. Their presumption was that taxes and duties were paid on the vans. For, the government allows the dealers to operate openly, and the sellers to advertise. But they were asked to present clearances from the Bureaus of Internal Revenue and of Customs. They do not have such clearances. The dealerships do, and copies are supposed to be in BIR and BoC files, not with them.

Buyers of dump trucks, pickups and sports utility vehicles from Subic auctioneers were equally shocked. BIR and BoC officials were present when they bought their vehicles at the auctions that started in 2000. The auctioneers had paid the taxes and duties before the auction, and given the buyers the certificates they would leave at the Subic gates when driving off. Everything was in order. But they were asked by the LTO to present certificates that they already surrendered to Subic authorities, who have all the files.

The sad part was that in November and December, the LTO directed car owners with questioned tax and duty payments to the central office in Diliman, Quezon City. That was the only one-stop shop in this country of 7,100 islands for them to clear up the mess they did not create in the first place. Only last jan. 13 did LTO chief Roberto Lastimoso issue guidelines to regional offices on how car owners can register newly-bought vans and renew the documents on the old ones through affidavits and other forms.

Why was the executive order issued? As it states: "Whereas, there have been reports that an undetermined number of taxable imported vehicles have not been registered with the LTO, or have been registered without the correct taxes, duties and fees collectible thereon being paid ...."

There have been reports? By whom? Have the reports been verified?

Don’t look at the car buyers for answers. It’s Camacho’s job to find out if such reports were true to begin with, and if so, to determine the number of such tax-, duty- and fee-evading vehicles. But he’s doing it shotgun, presuming that all buyers of American, European and Korean brands or of used Japanese makes are crooks.

Dealers and Subic auctioneers suspect that Camacho put up Mrs. Arroyo to sign the order in behalf of the favored few assemblers of Japanese cars. For, it further states: "This order shall cover taxable imported motor vehicles, except those imported under the Car Development Program of the Philippines by car manufacturers and assemblers duly registered with the Board of Investments."

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